This resonates with me as I have a similar thoughts on consciousness. The way I try to express my thoughts on this is to imagine that consciousness is a fabric that permeates the entire universe, but there exist these kind of extremely dense pockets of consciousness (ie, within us and our brains) where the fabric is tightly bound. Every kind of system that exists within the universe naturally lends itself to being conscious. The more complex the system the greater the density of consciousness it yields. Perhaps we cannot perceive consciousness in most (simpler) systems because it is minuscule compared to the density of consciousness within our brains, although we do tend to get these spooky kinds of insights and intuitions into the higher-order consciousness that emerges from many brains combined, such as collective consciousness, gaia, mass hysteria, etc.